


Though She Be But Little

by SylphOfPaperPlanes



Series: Pietro Pietro & Company [2]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Family Issues, a family with a fear of flying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 11:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1980996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylphOfPaperPlanes/pseuds/SylphOfPaperPlanes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After agreeing to enroll in Xavier's Institute, Pietro and his sister must get to Westchester via private jet.<br/>Their most dangerous foes? Airsickness and bitter memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Though She Be But Little

Pietro stood on the tarmac, watching the planes come and go along the runways while the sun was steadily rising. A messenger bag was thrown over one arm, and his sister’s hand in his. The rest of their luggage sat at their feet, and a bright pink backpack around the younger’s shoulders. She would point to each plane starting for the sky and make a remark about how that would be them in a few minutes, taking off into the bright morning air.

He had to admit, it was cute.

At nine on the dot, he watched as a familiar figure in a wheelchair moved agonizingly slowly towards them. His feet ached to run, and it felt like he could get to Westchester faster than Charles could get to them.

His sister had apparently noticed his anxiousness. It wasn’t as though it was uncommon in their household. “What do you think the school’s gonna be like, Peter?” She tugged on the sleeve of his jacket, shifting his train of thought. “Mom said it would be different than my old one.”

At her question, he dropped the tension in his jaw and let a smile grow on his face. “It’s going to be different, for sure. There’s going to be more people like me, and we’re going to get to stick together for once.”

“Am I gonna get cool powers? I wanna learn how to run fast, just like you.” Whatever he was about to say, some vague, encouraging comment about her powers manifesting, died just before his lips. Just like him? Her eyes were wide and smile bright. Innocent. Their mother never let her watch the anti-mutant riots and protests that seemed to be sprouting from every corner of the country, so how would she ever know what they were facing?

Luckily for him, his recovery time was better than anyone else he knew. “You can be anything you want to. Don’t let dumb powers decide that for you.” He glanced up to find that the professor was at least getting closer. “And anyways,” he continued, “If you also ended up having super speed, I think Mom would just about have a heart attack.”

And with that, Charles finally got to them. He nodded to Pietro in greeting, and smiled at his sister, who had taken refuge behind the teen’s legs. “Miss Lorna, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Lorna said nothing, staring up at her brother. “The Professor here is a telepath.” He explained, with a tilt of his chin in the direction of Charles. ”Quick, think of a number between one and one hundred.”

“Pietro, fifteen, Lorna, fifty-three.” He answered almost instinctively. “You’re both basically screaming your thoughts rather than thinking them. Now if we’re all done with parlor tricks, I do believe Hank should be around with the jet momentarily.”

 

* * *

 

The speakers of the plane crackled to life.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain, Hank McCoy, preparing for takeoff. On behalf of our non-existent crew, I would like to extend the warmest welcome aboard Xavier Airline’s nonstop flight from DC to Westchester. At this time, we’d like to request you keep all hands, feet, and heads inside the cabin at all times, and yes, that includes individuals with enhanced speed, strength, regeneration, and/or immortality.”

Charles let his head fall into his hands, already settled on the plane while Lorna and Pietro were still sitting down. “He does this every. Single. Time.” He muttered, and Lorna giggled quietly before Pietro gently nudged her shoulder to knock it off.

“At this time, please fasten your seatbelts and turn off any radios, remote controlled toys, telepathic mutations, and any electronic device with an antenna as they can and will interfere with the pilot as well as air traffic. Thank you, and have a nice day.”

“When he’s not doing science things or helping you break people out of jail, is he always like this?” Pietro asked, already helping himself to a bottle of water and a variety of snacks that he must have crammed in his bag.

“Yes.” Was the only reply, this one given from the speakers.

 

* * *

  

A solid thirty minutes into the flight, Pietro had been keeping himself busy with entertaining Lorna. They sat on chairs facing each other, the table between them littered with stationery papers crisply folded into origami birds and crinkled wrappers of whatever food he had on him at the time. She always helped him keep things on the slower side, and most of the time, he barely noticed it.  He did notice, however, how much he needed it when he was stuck in a metal death trap forty thousand feet above the ground with nowhere to run to.

The air tasted too stale for him, some mix of his own breath, jet fuel, and some type of air freshener. He tried not to take too much of it in, but the more he thought about it, the heavier he breathed. For the first time, he looked around the plane. It would do well to distract him. Nicely decorated, but everything was bolted down that was worth taking. And small. Very, very small.

“Hey!” His sister’s voice was light and excited, and he couldn’t help but give her his attention. “I forgot to give you this before we left!” She dropped a hardcover book into his instantly outstretched hands. He turned it over to find it without a dust jacket, and the clearly aged cover inscribed with the title. _A Midsummer’s Night Dream_. “Woah. It’s perfect! How’d you know I wanted a copy?” He muttered, thumbing through the pages. All faded slightly but in good shape for it’s age. “Where’d you get this? It’s certainly not something you’d pick up at the bookstore.”

“I mighta nabbed it from my teacher’s desk last week. It’s Shakespeare, and I knew you liked him.” She offered the statement with a shrug and a half smile while fidgeting under the compliment.

Pietro ruffled her hair while wearing a smile that matched hers. “That’s my sister-” He caught a stern glance from Charles, and the smile faded from his face. “-And we’re going to have to work on that. ” His eyes flickered to the professor for approval. “No more stealing.” Lorna’s face seemed painted with confusion, but shrugged it off and left to go to the bathroom.

Pietro sighed and dropped the tension in his shoulders he didn’t know he was holding. The fear of flying still hovered on the edges of his vision, so he closed his eyes for a few blissful seconds. He imagined his feet flying through a wide, open field. He always enjoyed running on dirt. It was something about the dust clouds that kicked up behind him, or the grass that bent in perfect shapes of his soles. Maybe his imaginary sprint was around a beautiful lake so that the surface would ripple as he ran past it, yeah that seemed about right. Just him, the sky, and the ground firmly spreading in all directions below-

The world jolted sharply. He startled immediately, sitting up at the same pace that his stomach was thrown into his throat.

“Buckle your seatbelts, as we may be experiencing some mild turbulence.” Hank called over the intercom, before another lurch of the jet brought him back to his task of  _flying the fucking plane_.

The teen tried to regulate his breath and took note of the fact that his sister was still off doing god knows what. The room felt smaller than earlier, if it was even possible. With every breath in he twitched his fingers, and every breath out came with a scuff of his foot on the carpet.

“I didn’t know this was your first time flying.” Charles said, and Pietro was snapped out of the cycle of breathing and fidgeting. The copy of _A Midsummer’s Night Dream_ was settled firmly in the other’s hands while he flipped through it casually.

“What gives it away?” He propped himself up on the armrest and took great interest in braiding and unbraiding a lock of his hair until it became a blur of pale skin and silver strands.

“Your thoughts may be painfully fast, but I am still able to catch fear in the mix, Pietro. That, and you’re pretty much downright green.”

He raised a hand to his face in defense. An innocent _Am not_  was on the tip of his tongue before the plane shook, and he bit down on both his words and the inside of his cheek to keep bile from rising in the back of his throat. “Point taken. Can we talk about something other than the flying metal deathtrap? Or is this some kind of twisted mutant school test?”

“No tests.” The professor looked up from the book for a split second before continuing to flip through the work. “As for another topic, how about your sister?”

Through the blur of nausea, he managed to narrow his eyes and cross his arms. “What about her? Is it that she hasn’t shown any powers? Because trust me, I’m sure they’ll be present sooner or later.”

“It was more about why the two of you are so inseparable.” Charles said, barely phased by the jarring movements of the plane.

“Because I care about her?”

“There’s more than that.” Pietro was almost offended by how quickly the older had responded and needed a split second to recover.

“I have another sister, you know.” He sighed in resignation. “Well, had, I guess. Not really sure anymore.”

 

* * *

 

Suddenly, Pietro wasn’t in the plane anymore. He found himself at home, well, a memory of home. The floorboards seemed to shake with tangible power and anger. Things like that only happened when Wanda was furious, and he recalled that his twin had been watching some sort of anti-mutant protest at the time. He didn’t understand why she still watched them if she knew it would only end up in broken doors and screaming matches. Usually, he would have gone for a run around the city or even just to the nearest department store, but the dark clouds and rain kept him trapped inside.

He stormed into the livingroom, or about as well as lightning could approach his thunder. Said thunder was currently sitting on the floor in front of the television with a set jaw and tired eyes directed at the screen blaring the riots. Her body seemed slumped where it sat, but the whiteness of her knuckles at her sides was a dead giveaway of her tension. “Hey, Wanda, wanna tone it down a bit? Lorna’s sleeping upstairs and mom isn’t home from work-”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Wanda snapped, looking back at her twin. “I thought you’d actually worry this time.” She stood and walked over to him, standing just slightly too close for comfort.

Pietro wasted time by running to turn off the television, straightening up the couch, and screwing in loose light bulbs in the lamps and ceiling, which spared him a half second before he ran out of tasks and found himself in front of his sister again. “I worry enough.”

“Obviously not, if you can pretend everything is going to be okay.” A roll of thunder  followed her words, and the two paused long enough to listen to it echo through the city.

“I’m trying here.” He offered before shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Peter, there are people that are out there, mutants out there that are fighting this, and we’re just stuck here worrying the protests will come to our doorstep if we aren’t careful.” Her eyes were pleading and searching for any scrap of empathy. It was rare that they ever weren’t in sync or stayed on the same wavelength. But when they weren’t, it was like they were a world and a half apart.

“If there weren’t consequences, trust me, I would run out of here right now to join some rebellion group.” Pietro tried to play it off as casual, digging a coin from his pocket and flipping it in the air and catching it over and over.

“Oh, so now the kleptomaniac is going to talk to me about consequences.” Wanda watched the silver coin twirl through the air repeatedly and spoke on the third throw. “Heads.”

“I’ll talk about it when those consequences are our safety and our lives. I would join them in a heartbeat if it didn’t mean certain death for me. And you. And Lorna and Mom and anyone innocent in the way.” He caught the coin in his palm, spreading his fingers so she could see the outcome. Washington’s profile stared at them. She was always right.

In a flash, he pressed the coin into her palm and closed her fingers around it before she could even react. He then promptly took perch on the couch and leaned back into the soft cushion but avoided dropping the tension in his shoulders to relax just yet. A flash of lightning lit the room, and finally Wanda’s mind caught up to Pietro’s movement and turned to face him.

“As for my tendency to steal things,” he continued while thunder roared in the distance, “Those are different consequences. It doesn’t take an economist to see that we are a little tight on money. And I barely ever get caught.”

“Fifteen times in the past four years.” She deadpanned.

“And only one pressed charges.”

“Two.”

“I think we’re getting off topic.”

“The point I’m trying to make is that we’ll either get caught here, or get a fighting chance out there to make a change.” She twirled the coin between her fingers with an exasperated sigh.

“You’ve seen the news. Those rebels disappear faster than they reveal themselves. It’s not safe enough to expect the world to give you a fighting chance.” He said, words tinged with a quiet bitterness.

“None of that is going to change if people don’t try to work against it. Progress is too slow, and I’m getting kind of sick of waiting.” Wanda didn’t even bother keeping her voice calm anymore, and clenched her fists at her sides to avoid triggering her powers will an ill-timed hand gesture.

“Don’t fucking talk to me about the world going too slow.” He stood up, restless and nearly shaking with anger. “I live one of your minutes for what feels like years.” Thunder and lightning exploded in the same second, and he watched as it threw Wanda off slightly, the coin slipping from between her fingertips. He caught it eons before it hit the ground and held it up to inspect it. “You ask me why I always seem so calm? It’s because I can see what’s going on long before it even happens, and get the hell out of the way.”

He gestured wildly towards the television, stepping closer to his sister. He could taste the ways his words were starting to blur together with speed and volume but didn’t bother to try and stop it. He briefly heard the coin that was once in his hand hit the ground before thunder and lightning screamed again. “So when you say to go join the fight, some mutant army or something, all I see is an issue we can’t run from coming up fast.”

“And I see a chance to make the world a better place. And you know my luck with chance.”

“You really want to do this, don’t you?”

“I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t go.”

The moment seemed to last forever, even out of Pietro’s version of time. They stared at each other while lightning and thunder took turns sounding off. She blinked slowly, as though she was trying to replay every second again behind her eyelids while he blinked rapidly, trying to pull back any tears that arrived before they were noticed by the other.

“You could come too.” She offered, breaking the suffocating silence. “The Amazing Maximoff Twins. Remember that?”

“Don’t go bringing up childhood nicknames to convince me.” In truth, he wished she’d continued, mentioned the superhero names they had given each other, the stories they spun about Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, the games they would play in the backyard with rocks flying in perfect arcs and exploding under her control and him darting around them. If she had even said a word about it, he would have joined her on the spot, no question asked.

But she didn’t.

Instead, Wanda nodded slowly, walked out into the hall, and stopped before the front door. Pietro moved behind her, a silver shadow hesitant to leave the other. He offered her a favorite pair of her combat boots, and she laced them up with trembling fingers. She pulled a red bomber jacket from the coat hanger, sliding the material around her shoulders and taking her time with the zipper.

“Wait.” Pietro said suddenly, and in a flash, he was upstairs. Racing past Lorna’s bedroom where she was thankfully still asleep and into his twin’s room. He grabbed a dark messenger bag -they had gotten matching ones for their last birthday- and threw in whatever clothes that seemed comfortable enough. He also stopped in his room, removing a wad of cash from a hollow book which he had been accumulating for the past few months.

When he had made it back downstairs, Wanda had moved into the kitchen, scribbling a note on crumpled paper. Pietro dropped the bag on the counter next to her, and took time to reread the letter several times, in the space of the miliseconds before she noticed he was there.

“You’re going to tell her you ran away.” For once, his tone was light, snarky even.

“With a boy.” She added with a roll of her eyes. “They won’t look for me, then. Or at least, not as much.” She signed the paper with a flourish and set the pen down beside it. “And anyway, you’ll be the one telling her. The note is my half of the story.”

“You expect me to lie?”

“Just tell them you were in the basement and didn’t hear me leave. You blare music on a regular basis, and it’s not much of a stretch.” She slung the bag he packed over her shoulder and gave him a halfhearted smile.

The two walked back to the front door, and Pietro pressed the cash into her palm, closing her fingers around it in the same way that he had the coin. “I’m a thief and now a liar, but never say I wasn’t generous.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She pocketed the money and rested her hand on the doorknob, taking one last look around the house.

“I’ll come find you. Eventually.” Maybe it was the hesitation in her movements, or the way her nails cautiously brushed the brass handle, but he felt like he needed her to know that he would be there. Or here. Or wherever he could be for her.

“Don’t come running after me this time. Trust me, you’ll know when I want to be found.” She gave a tight lipped smile while staring at the ground, and Pietro rushed to brush away the tears threatening to spill over. He didn’t want her last sight of him to be crying if he could help it.

“And come on,” She said, turning the knob and pushing her way out into the rain, “This isn’t goodbye.”

Everything in him wanted to shout _"Yes it is!"_  at her receding form, but he couldn’t get the words out as she ran between the raindrops and out into the world he feared so much.

Lightning flashed across the dark clouds, but Pietro couldn’t hear the thunder over the roaring in his ears.

 

* * *

 

The plane jolted again, breaking Pietro out of the memory. He rested his head in his hands, but not before seeing the professor with two fingers at his temple. “You son of a bitch. What happened to my mind being too fast to read?”

“You thinking about your sisters calms it down considerably.” Charles said before lowering his hand. “I’m sorry Pietro, I didn’t know about Wanda.”

“It happened a year ago.” He ran a single hand through his hair before letting his entire body slump back into the seat. “I haven’t heard from her since. Lorna’s pretty much all I have left right now, and she knows it. I’m kind of all she has left, too. We have a dual support system thing.”

“Is she...?” Charles trailed off with a tilt of his head. _Blood related._ It was a question they got a lot, due to vague difference in appearance and their mother’s cycle of boyfriends that never seemed to have a start or finish.

“Well, uh... Half sister.” He raised a hand to dismiss it. “It’s kinda complicated.”

“She has a surprising amount of heart to her. Much like you. A fighting passion, if you will.” He seemed amused with his revelation, and his face even showed off pride for his students-to-be.

“To be honest, I think I got it from her. She’s shy right now, but no one has confidence like she does.”

Charles smiled, an honest to goodness smile, and held up the copy of _A Midsummer’s Night Dream_. “Though she be but little, she is fierce.”

The little and fierce herself emerged from the bathroom with another shake of the plane, and she scrambled to her seat as fast as possible. A simple look at her face showed very clearly that Pietro was not the only one suffering from motion sickness, and that she might even be having it worse. “I am _not_  little.” She muttered with a pout. “Peter, tell him.”

“So she’s the only one who’s allowed to call you Peter?” Xavier said with vague amusement tinting his words.

“It’s a family thing.” Pietro replied with a shrug.

* * *

 

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Private Xavier Airfield. Local time is 10:15 am, on a bright and sunny Saturday morning. On behalf of the non-existent flight crew, I would like to ask our passengers to wait patiently to exit the plane. Thank you, and have a nice day.”

Pietro didn’t want to wait. He’d dealt with this piece of shit metal deathtrap too long to even think about waiting. By the time the door was unsealed, he was stood there with his bag over his shoulder and luggage in hand. He stepped out of the plane and down the stairs to the blessed blacktop below. The air still had a singe of jet fuel to it, but hell, it was _fresh fucking air_. He stood there for an immeasurable amount of time, stretching his muscles and enjoying the freedom he’d missed so much. He barely noticed when his sister joined him, dropping her bags at her feet and just staring at the wide property before them, and a castle-like mansion in the distance.

“Welcome home.” Charles offered, rolling by the two in his wheelchair.

“Yeah,” Pietro said, nodding slightly, “I guess it is home.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Part 2 completed! What did you think? Feel free to leave a comment or shoot me and ask via [my tumblr](http://algebrasunshine.tumblr.com/ask/) with any thoughts, questions, or suggestions!


End file.
